Embry Burton, a Bonner Leader at Rollins College, has effectively integrated science, service, and leadership through the Bonner Program, which emphasizes community engagement and social justice. As they pursue a Master of Public Health at Emory University, Embry exemplifies how Bonner's structured approach has shaped their academic and career aspirations in public health and global health.
Berry College, Bonner Alum, Dr. Emily Melchior (16C), has established herself as a prominent figure in animal health research, serving as the Manager of Global Outcomes Research at Zoetis Animal Health. She is recognized for her contributions to ruminant microbiology and nutrition, and she actively supports young professionals through mentorship and her involvement in various organizations.
Davidson College, Bonner Scholar, Hannah Lieberman ’18 wrote, directed and performed Hysterical, a one-woman comedy musical exploring topics of relationships, identity and her family’s history of inherited ovarian cancer. Her hustling brought her to QED, a small arts venue in Astoria, Queens, New York, and, for at least the last decade, the only woman-owned and operated venue in the area.
TCNJ’s Bonner Community Scholars Program launched 20 years ago, it started with just 12 Bonner Scholars — students who commit to 300 hours of community service annually in exchange for needs-based scholarships. Now, with close to 100 participants each year, the TCNJ program is one of the largest and most successful in a nationwide network of Bonner college programs.
In celebration of Elaine Wheeler's retirement, we honor her invaluable contribution to the Bonner Foundation. Her commitment and mentorship have been instrumental in our growth as a Foundation and the Network we have today. As she embarks on her retirement, we celebrate her legacy of dedication and look forward to the path she has paved for us.
PINE HILLS, Fla. - Evans High School graduate Julien Serrano-O'Neil, 19, told News 6 he hopes his story of triumph and hardship will motivate and inspire other homeless and troubled youth that they can do whatever they put their minds to.
O'Neil is a sophomore at Morehouse College, majoring in political science with a minor in philosophy.
Ivory Moore ’20 is feeling pretty good about her life chances these days. Moore grew up in the Capital Region and spent many hours at the Boys and Girls Club of Albany as a child. The formative experiences she enjoyed there provided direction and purpose.
This drive helped lead her to Siena College where she now develops curriculum for the Club as a Bonner Service Leader through the College’s Center for Academic and Community Engagement (ACE). Moore hopes this work will one day lead to a career – perhaps as a high school superintendent or maybe something even bigger: “I want to create my own high school!”
Part of the prestigious Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP) internship program, Shelby Boyd ’18, a Bonner Scholar, worked with a statewide organization called Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) this summer.
The grassroots organization, with 10,000 members across Kentucky, aims to empower individuals to affect change, focusing on tax justice, environmental issues, healthcare and affordable housing, among other challenges.
As a community organizing intern, Boyd spent her time coordinating member meetings, training in tax justice and communication and planning events, specifically the fourth annual Smoketown Getdown for Democracy to celebrate Louisville’s Smoketown neighborhood.
Emily Horton ’18 said she “cried a little” when she found out that she’d been selected the 2017 Sommerville Scholar. The annual award, given since 1965 in memory of former professor Richard Clarke Sommerville, is the most prestigious academic accolade presented at Lynchburg.
A Bonner Leader, Horton has volunteered with area nonprofits, among them Lynchburg Grows, Lynchburg Daily Bread, and the local humane society. This year, as a senior intern, she’s helping facilitate the program and run meetings.
This year, Swearer Center students are working in partnership with more than 90 community organizations. Some of these organizations have been community partners of the Swearer Center for years, others for just weeks. Bonner Community Fellow Bilal Lafta '20 is working on building a relationship between Swearer and Beat the Streets, an organization that works to bring after-school wrestling programs into middle schools across the state. He talks here about why Beat the Streets' work is so important and some of the exciting possibilities of the new partnership.
Five DePauw University students will spend the Fall 2017 semester studying abroad after winning Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships. Three of the five are Bonner Scholars at DePauw.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Gilman International Scholarship Program offers grants for U.S. citizen undergraduate students of limited financial means to pursue academic studies or credit-bearing, career-oriented internships abroad. Such international exchange is intended to better prepare U.S. students to assume significant roles in an increasingly global economy and interdependent world.
For eight weeks, Marissa Bucklew ’18 worked with the Atlanta Community Food Bank and its many community gardens, while Elise Togbe ’18 spent her summer in Louisville, teaching refugees and immigrants at Americana Community Center. Both internships were sponsored by the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty.
The internships connected well with the mission of Lynchburg College’s Bonner Leader Program, in which students spend two or three years working in the community on issues like education, hunger, homelessness, or sustainability. “This is an extension of what Bonner is about, understanding and becoming more involved in poverty,” Anne Gibbons, director of LC’s Bonner Leader Program. “SHECP has sent interns all over the country to organizations and nonprofits, working to address poverty.”
Jonathan Sheperd-Smith, an economics and anthropology double major, doesn't believe in service for the sake of service. The Bonner Scholar, Brown Scholar, Terry Fellow and football captain from Atlanta, Georgia, uses his service requirements at Davidson to engage more deeply with the community.
As part of his work with the Bonner Scholars Program, Sheperd-Smith created the DuBoisian World Scholars Society. The group, with a name inspired by W.E.B. DuBois, focuses on closing the information gap for low income minority kids in the hope of inspiring them to become stakeholders in their educational experiences.
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Virginia Chapter has awarded Christopher Newport University senior Abbey Yoder the 2017 Bachelor’s in Social Work Student of the Year Award. Yoder was recognized for her outstanding academic work, leadership qualities and accomplishments in field work.
Yoder, a Bonner Service Scholar, works with a local refugee resettlement agency to improve the lives of Bhutanese refugees in Newport News.
A Centre College Bonner Student hopes basketball can be a key to creating better connections and understanding between the college community and the surrounding city and county.
Hari Perisic, a senior finance and economic major at Centre has developed a proposal for unique event featuring a community basketball tournament, a community conversation on difficult topics and a street party with local food.
George Boston, ′13, isn’t the first person many would have expected to play for a Division I football team.
When he started high school in New York City, he couldn't play football because the school only had a track team. In fact, the school didn’t have a lot of things. Boston knew if he wanted to attend college, he was going to have to make some changes.
When Sharon Lim, ’16, talks about the many ways she’s exploring education inequality, it’s hard to believe that just two years ago, she had no idea her college experience would be dedicated to the issue.
She has always been an active volunteer. She spent her free time in high school working at a local hospital and teaching children to read. Her work inspired an interest in social justice so when she applied to Richmond, she also applied to the Bonner Scholars program.
Kelsey Ensign, ’15, remembers the exact moment she decided to transfer to University of Richmond. Following a conversation with Bonner Scholar Emily Blevins, ’13, who attended Ensign’s Chattanooga, Tenn., high school, Ensign logged into her computer to learn more about the work Blevins was doing through the University of Richmond’s Bonner Center for Civic Engagement (CCE).
“I vividly remember sitting in my dorm room exploring the CCE home page,” Ensign says. “I looked at all the community partners and thought I could learn a lot about civic engagement and myself at University of Richmond.”
When I applied to the University of Richmond, I asked Gil Villanueva in the Office of Admissions what one piece of advice he would offer an incoming Spider. What hadn’t students taken advantage of that they should have? He replied without hesitation: “Take advantage of the city.”
It didn’t take much convincing. Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, has historic truths in its veins; provocative stories echo through the halls of museums and on battlefields where the North and South fought, brother against brother. As a lover of American history and political science, I was hooked.
In a written reflection from the beginning of my senior year, I began describing a person whom I know through service by using an excerpt from the first chapter of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s “Remnants of Auschwitz,” which I read for a French class the year before.
The chapter is entitled “The Witness,” and in this excerpt, Agamben quotes an interview with Primo Levi – a Jewish Italian chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor. In the excerpt, Levi talks about himself in direct comparison to the classic trope of the sailor who must tell everyone his tale:
In nearly four years as a Spider, Russell Gong, ’11, has never looked back on his decision to pass up offers to play Division I lacrosse and instead attend the University of Richmond. With his record of leadership and civic engagement on campus — plus a consulting job waiting for him after graduation — why would he?
Gong, who grew up in Singapore and Fairfax, Va., was a regional lacrosse standout and was captain of his high school’s varsity lacrosse and football teams. But athletics captured only part of his attention; ever since a summer restaurant job washing dishes, he has wanted to work with refugees and immigrants.
“In the kitchen, I witnessed traumatic abuses against Mexican immigrant workers,” he says. “From there, I focused my college efforts toward social justice and community inclusion issues.”
Good afternoon.
For those of you who don't know me very well, I'm Sean Hickey, a senior intern for the Bonner Scholars Program. Before becoming a senior intern, I volunteered at Henderson Middle School as an after-school program leader with the Middle School Renaissance (MSR) program.
My time there caused me to ask many questions of myself, of the public school system, and of volunteering/service writ large. These questions were almost always stimulated by theoretical concepts I studied in courses taken here at UR.
The most grandiose of these questions was, if what we do today is later found to have a bad result, even though we think of our actions and service as good, than have we been doing bad things all along? Does this then mean we should always assume that our service is inherently bad or wrong in order to critically and constantly question our service and ourselves?
Davidson Senior Melodie Mendez is among 17 North Carolina student winners of the 2012 "Community Impact Award" from Campus Compact, a national coalition that promotes civic engagement in higher education. The award was announced just days before she was also named as senior class recipient of the college's Goodwin-Exxon award for high standards of character, friendliness and consideration for others.
Our student recipient of the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award goes to a young woman from Davidson, North Carolina. She is an English major and ethnic studies concentrator. She has spent four years as a Bonner Scholar, and according to one, is the leader within the group, organizing the ideas and initiatives of her peers to bring to action. Her primary focus is on youth advocacy, whether tutoring at a local elementary school, The LEARNWORKS afterschool program at Ada Jenkins, or as a Servant Leader for the Freedom Schools in the summer.
